Races of Isaldor - The Chrail
Pronunciation: It rhymes with “thrall” (chrawl) Height: 3’ 5”- 4’2” quadrupedal. Up to 7’ 7” bidepedal. Weight: 260 Ibs-350 Ibs The most mysterious of all sapient creatures is perhaps the chrail. Chrails would not be offended at such a statement, as they realize they are strange when compared to human or kenos or udrezo thinking. Physically, chrails are comparable to humans. However, they have four arms--two of them are where their legs would be on a human. As such, chrail tend to prefer switching in between walking around bipedally and quadrupedally. Each of their arms ends with a hand and each of them have opposable thumbs. Each arm does have the strength to hold the body up alone (albeit temporarily), and making such a gesture is an important part of chrail body language Chrails tend to have a very grey skin tone. Their hair however, can only be red. There are various shades of red, from pink to a dark maroonish color, but it’s always some form of red. It tends to run all the way down their back, attached to the skin about midway. And most chrails seem to like keeping it long, at least in the front area. Their teeth are comparable to humans, completely omnivorous. However, their eyes are vastly different. They have more than just three types of rods and cones and can differentiate many more types of colors than humans. It can get to the point where chrail paintings wouldn’t be recognizable by humans. That is… if the chrail made paintings. The chrail brain is vastly different from that of humans and it causes a lot of discrepancies in relations with other races. Chrails do not make paintings, at least not in earnest, because they have no sense of visual beauty. They can distinguish what everything looks like, but to look at the deformed or what would be striking to the human eye has no effect on chrails. At least, not in any artistic sense. However, chrails can sense tactile beauty. Certain materials like silk or smooth sand will trigger the sense for beauty. This tends to make chrail cultures alien to humans, as it emanates into every part of their society. For example, most chrails don’t seem to have the concept of “physical space” and if a human were to refuse getting touched by a chrail, the chrail would assume that they lack self-esteem. This most likely comes from several survival mechanisms. For example, a chrail would find fire ugly. From an early age, chrail tend to have a strong innate magical talent. Even as infants, they are telepathic - able to throw their emotions to anyone who will listen. After about a year, they can learn to throw images into other people’s minds, and the ability gets even more refined as it gets older. In some chrail civilizations (ones secluded from other races), some chrails can go their entire lives without learning a sonorous language. Their ability to do that at all, seems largely vestigial (although it is theorized that there are plenty of things that can only be conveyed in a sonorous language that couldn’t be conveyed through thoughts or emotions). Their telepathic abilities and their idea of tactile beauty leads to an excessive need for intimacy, and actual romantic behaviors can… get intense. During a romantic encounter, chrails tend to go through something called a “mind meld,” which can be described as telepathic puking during physical relations. Everything is put on the table, everything is revealed. There is no secrets. They give access to each other’s entire memories, entire life experiences. And chrails do things with their mind that’s hard to convey through simple writing. It is for this reason most of all that chrails are highly monogamous. If the partnership doesn’t work out sometime down the line, they tend to not be ready to begin another relationship for their entire lives. With such close intimacy comes the risk of intense betrayal. Chrails can reproduce for most of their lives. They are mammals, and have live births. Four tend to be birthed during one session after about five months of pregnancy. A chrail childhood lasts about 16 years before the onset of puberty, and they have a life expectancy of 135. Chrails also tend to be nocturnal, many facets of their being seems to be designed for it. The chrail is one of the most widespread of all of the races - even moreso than humans these days, staying headlong out of conflicts with the udrezo. What we know is that chrail most likely originated on the continent of Mosdor, and most likely had a common ancestor with humans when the continent was combined with Zykim millions of years ago. Mosdor has the highest concentration of chrails in the world. The only countries on that continent not dominated by chrails are the Shyf Isles and Daim. Due to their telepathic nature, it’s hard to get an accurate gauge on their history beyond what’s recorded with humans. That being said, humans and chrails have known about each other for over 10,000 years now. We’ve largely been a part of each other’s histories and it’s common to see many chrails in human settlements and vice-versa. However, many humans and chrails choose not to intermingle. Category:Miscellaneous